NANJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Once stereotyped as a landscape of billowing smoke and grueling manual labor, China's steel sector is undergoing a profound digital metamorphosis. With the use of artificial intelligence (AI), this traditional heavy industry is shedding its outdated image and proving that modern steelmaking can be smart, sophisticated, and green.
At the heart of this transformation is the dismantling of the industry's historical "black box." For decades, operating a converter was an art form reliant on the intuition of veteran workers, as extreme temperatures made direct observation impossible. Today, that opacity is being replaced by algorithmic precision.
Inside the smart operations center of Nanjing Steel Group Co., Ltd. in east China's Jiangsu Province, giant screens now display real-time data on converter temperatures and steel grades. Powered by a specialized large language model developed in partnership with Huawei, a renowned tech giant, the system utilizes thousands of internal sensors to dynamically predict furnace conditions.
With the accuracy of temperature trend prediction consistently exceeding 90 percent, the AI acts as "X-ray vision" for the furnace, boosting the first-grade rate of hot metal by over 10 percentage points and slashing energy consumption per unit of output by 12 percent.
"AI gives us the confidence to continuously tackle the complexities of advanced steel materials," said Xu Xiaochun, executive vice president of the Nanjing-based steel giant. As domestic demand shifts toward high-strength, corrosion-resistant alloys with small-batch, multi-category orders, AI has become essential for managing production variables that are beyond the capacity of human operators.
This technological leap extends far beyond individual enterprises; it is reshaping the entire national industry. To boost high-quality development, the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA), the industry's top trade body, has launched a three-year digital transformation initiative.
Li Yiren, vice president of CISA, noted that the value of AI lies not merely in improving the efficiency of a single position, but in redefining the entire value chain -- from R&D and manufacturing to procurement, logistics, and marketing. He added that data is becoming a new factor of production, and AI is emerging as a key tool in the production process.
The results are already visible across China's steel giants. In Beijing, Beijing Shougang Co., Ltd., a major Chinese steelmaker, has embedded AI deeply into its production processes, earning its cold-rolling subsidiary a coveted "Lighthouse Factory" designation from the World Economic Forum in early 2025. Since the start of 2026, the company has deployed 45 AI agents and has implemented 929 intelligent application scenarios, converting digital innovation into tangible economic value.
Meanwhile, in north China's Inner Mongolia, Bao Gang United Steel, a leading Chinese steelmaker, has pioneered a fully closed-loop AI smelting system following the successful deployment of its smart steelmaking large model. By transitioning from manual judgment to autonomous algorithmic control, the system has increased endpoint carbon-temperature hit rates by over 15 percent and shortened the average smelting cycle by 1.5 minutes, greatly reducing oxygen and raw material consumption.
Zhang Longqiang, a national expert on smart manufacturing, noted that AI is fundamentally reshaping steelmaking from traditional manufacturing to smart manufacturing, systematically dismantling long-standing operational "black boxes." Ultimately, this AI-Steel integration is driving a historic pivot from scale-driven expansion to quality-focused profitability, forging new productive forces for the sector's future. ■
